I left Belize with my travelling buddies from the U.K and the U.S, having to leave fellow Canadian Oscar behind because of his schedule, and took a water taxi from Caye Caulker to Chetumal, Mexico. After a few hours on the boat and a frantic mix-up at the bus station (where we didn't realize that there was an hour time difference from Belize until 5 minutes before our bus was supposed to leave), we finally made it to our destination of Tulum.
After settling into the hostel (which, thank goodness, would pose none of the problems that we had encountered in Belize), I found the best tacos of my trip at a street cart on the corner, and then walked around the main strip with the crew before calling it a night. The next morning, we hit the ruins.
After having seen Tikal, I wasn't all that impressed with the ruins themselves at Tulum. Unlike Tikal, and many subsequent ruins I would see, they weren't that big, there weren't many intricate carvings or stellae, and there weren't any striking monuments that stood out. Also, the clean cut grass and grounds looked like they were groomed by the Groupe Paysagiste landscaping crew, so it didn't feel like the authentic ruins experience. It probably didn't help that we did it without a guide, following only the shoddily-translated signs. Nonetheless, from my experience so far, every individual set of ruins has one attribute that it far surpasses all of the others in. Tikal was the sheer size, Chichen Itza was the pyramid and ball-court, Xpujil was that I was the only one there, Calakmul was in the middle of the jungle, and Tulum was the most picturesque setting, sitting on the crystal clear waters and white-sandy beach of the Carribean. Needless to say, we spent about an hour at the ruins, and the remainder of the day sitting on the beach with cervezas in hand.
Anna does her best Japanese tourist impression.
Straight out of the Corona ads.
The day after Tulum, I bid farewell to my travel crew, who were headed back down towards Belize and then into Guatemala, and headed to Chichen Itza on my way to visit Isla Holbox. I had met a nice Israeli guy at the hostel who was also headed to the ruins for the day, so we decided to check it out together, and eventually hired a guide when we realized how much there was to see. Our guide was quite nice, and we bargained him down to a quite acceptable 200 pesos each for a 2 hour tour, but in the end I think he made some things up, and he spent most of his time walking instead of explaining things. My Israeli friend was quite cool, but I had to hold my tongue when he made statements like "the mayans couldn't have been too strong if they let the Christians change their modern religious practices," comparing the situation to judaism after I explained to him that the mayan people still live in these areas, but have adapted their ceremonies over time and now have somewhat of a mixture between traditional mayan and Catholic worship. This was similar to the next time I would visit Chichen Itza with Anita, and our guide (of mayan descent) told us that a Spaniard on his last tour had asked him "You must be happy that we came and civilized your people?". Whoever "ignorance is bliss" was obviously quite ignorant himself.
Word on the street is that the mayans invented tic-tac-toe.
Chichen Itza sort of threw me off because of all the people trying to sell you stuff. There wasn't anything like that at Tikal or Tulum, and it sort of reduced the awe-inspiring pyramid and ball-court when people kept yelling "ten pesos amigo, one dollar my friend" as you walked by. The best part is that nothing actually cost so little, as apparently they just yell that to get you to come over, and then inform you that they meant ten pesos off the original price. Can you say tourist trap? Nonetheless, the history and detail behind the ruins themselves is quite incredible, from the sacrificial platforms, to the ball-court with carvings of dudes cutting off other dudes' heads and blood squirting out everywhere in the form of snakes, and the hundreds of ornate skulls carved into a platform where apparently they skewered the heads of captured enemy soldiers. Word. Unfortunately it got too dark to capture some of the better carvings, because the lack of light wouldn't bring out the shadows to define them, but I managed to get some good shots when I went back a second time with Anita, which I will put up in a later post. My favorite is the one of the knife-wielding warrior, fully decked out in a traditional war costume, triumphantly standing on the neck of a helpless prisoner with blood gushing out of his mouth. Those mayans didn't mess around.
They threw a lot of offerings into this well: jade jewelry, ornate pottery, and kids too I think. Parental discipline brought to a whole new level...
Aside from the main attractions of the pyramid and the ball-court, the observation tower was also quite interesting, as it's the place where the mayans plotted the stars and figured out how to trick the common people into believing they were gods. Whenever a lunar eclipse was coming, they would tell the people that they weren't working hard enough, and that the gods were angry and would take the sun away from them to show their disapproval. People would freak out when the eclipse happened, because what they had been told was true, and then they would be told that the gods were forgiving, so they would get the sun back (but they needed to work harder) - and POOF! - the sun was back again. They were sneaky little buggers those mayan elite. They also managed to build the main pyramid in such a manner that twice a year, on the equinoxes, the light hits the side of the stairs at such an angle that it appears a snake is slithering down the temple from the top. Maybe we could have been able to pass this off as a lucky accident, if it weren't for the fact that the mayans also built giant snake heads of stone at the bottom of the pyramid, which coincidentally align perfectly with the light-snake-illusion. Figures. Sneaky and smart. A good combination.
Apparently they rolled peoples' heads down these stairs at the beginning of every new calendar year.
After Chichen Itza, I grabbed a bus to Valladolid, and then to the small town of Tizimin, where I would stay the night before heading to my final destination of Isla Holbox. Apparently, in the summer months between July and September, whale sharks, who normally live solitary in the great depths of the ocean, congregate at the surface in droves to feast on plankton in the warm Mexican waters. I was excited...
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